Peeter and Juuli Gentalen from Estonia

Happy Tie-the-Knot-Thursday, everyone! Today I have a lovely wedding photo for you that I bought at my favourite antique store in Tallinn, Estonia. The couple is identified as Peeter and Juuli Gentalen from Uue Vingi, Estonia.

Estonians are true genealogy buffs, so I had no difficulty finding the couple on Geni.com. I have added their wedding photo to their Geni profiles and hope to make contact with their families.

Peeter Gentalen and Juuli née Toodo got married on June 20, 1921. Peeter was 23 (born in 1898), and Juuli 17 (born on September 25, 1903) at the time. For their young lives they had already experienced quite a bit – WWI devastated their home country Estonia, Peeter had been drafted to the reserves at just 15. Just as the rest of Europe started picking up the pieces of the WWI destruction in 1918 when the war ended, Estonians saw the war go into overtime for more than a year – The Independence War against Soviet Russia was won by Estonians together with their allies in February 1920 and for the first time in history, Estonia declared itself independent as a sovereign Republic. Young Estonians were eager to welcome all the new opportunities the new found independence brought to them. Peeter and Juuli hopped on that train of optimism.

The geni.com page for Juuli includes her photo from before her wedding! Oh, how I love to see the strangers in my found photos in different phases of their life! You can definitely recognise her 100%.

Juuli was 79 when she passed away in July 1983.

I don’t know when Peeter passed away, he was not mentioned among the mourners of Juuli's passing in 1983, I assume he might have passed away before her. According to Geni.com, Peeter and Juuli had 5 children. I will try to make contact with the Geni account administrators and return the photo to the family.